


vita brevis

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Clockwork!Elves, M/M, World Travel, decaying steampunk world, hope and legacy, mortality and acceptance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-07-19 12:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7360837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cogsmiths have become myth. The technology that once might have saved this world is slowing to a stop. Their legacies live on, surrounded by people who have forgotten. And in this decaying, neglectful world, two men are following stories, the threads of history slowly unwinding, trying to save just one faltering heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lobstergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobstergirl/gifts).



> This is my contribution to the [Barduil Gift Exchange](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/barduil-gift-exchange), organised by the ever wonderful [barduil](http://barduil.tumblr.com/) (yes, we're all very envious of their recently acquired url).
> 
> [lobstergirl1917](http://lobstergirl1917.tumblr.com/) requested something steampunk-y, so this is what I have aimed to achieve - and I really hope that you enjoy it! The next two chapters should be uploaded over the next few days :)
> 
> vita brevis - life is short

* * *

 

  ** _Living is like licking honey off a thorn. - Louis Adamic_ **

 

* * *

 

 

He had first realised that something was wrong the morning he woke to hear Thranduil’s heart skip a beat.

He had blinked awake, as he so often did, with his head resting against Thranduil’s chest, his cheek pressed to bare skin, their bodies warm against each other, the habitual resonance of the clockwork heart ticking out its rhythm deep beneath Thranduil’s ribcage a comforting sound: but the familiarity of the moment was distorted, as Bard slowly blinked, as that ticking faltered, for just a moment.

Not a fancy idiom, you understand - no, lying there in the dim light of an early morning, he he heard a literal falter in a rhythm that had always been so sure, so clear, so singularly unchanging. 

It was enough to startle any lover from their sleep - even more so if the heart in question was not one that should ever have lost its timing.

Bard had thought, at first, that he had misheard, for how could his strange and eternal lover waver so? But then he had felt Thranduil tense against him, and he realised that he had heard – or, more likely, felt – it too.

It had been some days before Thranduil had been willing to talk about it, his hair falling across his face whenever Bard tried to bring it up, but when they heard it again, late one night in their bed again, it could no longer be denied.

Thranduil - timeless, immortal - was dying.

 

* * *

 

Bard had not believed in the stories of clockwork men before he had met Thranduil.

Those tales whispered by mothers were for childhood, not the grim reality of adult life: they were not to be believed anymore, not by reasonable men. There was no proof, anyway, nothing to suggest that those stories of great immortals who acted as guardians of this world had ever existed. No one really believed that clockwork men had ever really been made. Like the Cogsmiths, those mythical figures who had first brought their living clockwork to the world, the clockwork men were a fable, something to entertain children, for old men to talk about in bars when deep in their drink.

_Once, Gods walked among us, when we were just primitive things, hiding from the predators of the world. Fourteen of them, great and powerful beings beyond anything that we could ever understand, noble and tall with hands of creation._

Stories, nothing more.

_Once, they had created marvels, and lifted us from the dirt to the airy heights of Gods._

_Once, they built an army of clockwork men to protect us, armed them and set them the task to keep us safe, before they left us to our own devices._

_Once, these clockwork men had walked among us._

_Once, this world had been full of marvels._

But not anymore. No one really believed those stories, and they did not even make that much sense, varied too much across the world. He had never thought much on them, before he had come to the Factory City all those years ago, and first met Thranduil in the stinking alleys and dilapidated apartments in the great smog-spewing hive of factories that was the capital of the formerly-Great Britain.

For all intents and purposes, Thranduil appeared as a man, and it had been years before Bard had found the truth out about his friend: there was a strange grace about his movement, a coolness to his skin, a distance in his eyes and a set rhythm to his breathing, but none of that would really give him away. He certainly wore no armour, nor did cogs visibly move beneath his skin; though Bard found his eyes constantly following the strange and quiet man, there was no reason that he would ever have believed that he were anything other than mortal. He had not even believed Thranduil when first he had confessed the truth of his story, the two of them sitting close together in the dim oil-lamp light of the tiny apartment that Bard lived in, the machinery in the factory below never quite silent. It had only been when he had removed his shirt (something that Bard at the time had hoped would happen after all those months of longing, though he had thought it would happen in a different context) and shown him the faint depressions in his skin over his sternum, a perfect square in the flawless expanse of his chest, which, with just a gentle touch of Thranduil’s fingers, opened, revealing beneath not flesh or bone or blood, but slowly ticking metal, glowing strangely.

It had taken him a long time to understand, to believe, but Thranduil had been patient, and gentle, as one might be with a startled animal.

What he had learned then was minimal, when he thought back to it later, though at the time it had felt like more than he could ever hope to conceive: on _c_ e, Cogsmiths walked among us, and he did not know what had happened to them. Fourteen of them, great and powerful beings beyond anything that we could ever understand, noble and tall with hands of creation. Once, they had created marvels, and they had given them to mankind for reasons of their own. Once, an army of clockwork men had been built, used and then left to their own devices.

These clockwork men had walked among mankind for many centuries.

Once, there had been hundreds of them, but now as far as Thranduil knew there was only him left, the others having followed the Cogsmiths elsewhere.

“Where did they go?” Bard had asked, but Thranduil was unwilling to say much more, tracing the curve of Bard’s mouth with his fingertips, his eyes full of grief.

“Do not make me speak of it,” he had whispered in the dark, and Bard had nodded.

Over the many years that they had spent together he had told Bard little more about those times centuries before, and Bard had never pressed him for more than he gave. He knew enough to be content, and he loved Thranduil, loved him enough to never want to make him think on that which might hurt him.

_God how he loved him._

And now, his heart was failing.

“I have lived many thousands of years, my love,” Thranduil had told him, his voice a little tired, when Bard had finally managed to make him talk. “And nothing is eternal, no matter what we might think. My body is a machine, which has had no maintenance since first I walked this earth – its decay, in the end, is inevitable.”

But Bard could not believe that.

The thought of Thranduil dying – he could not contemplate it, did not _want_ to. Thranduil was not meant to die, he had believed that for the longest time, and the concept of him being wrong was not one that he could accept so easily.

There would be a way to save him, Bard was sure, and he would not rest until they had found it.

So he had convinced Thranduil to try: they had set up appointments first with the best clocksmiths in the Factory City, then all across Britain when those failed to come up with any answer: it was a lengthy and tedious process, though no way near as expensive as Bard had feared: when the tired old clocksmiths realised that what Thranduil was saying was true, when he opened the cavity in his chest to show them the delicate clockwork that made him live, most of them were too awed at the truth of his existence to want to charge them. But most, too, were unwilling to even touch him, too afraid of damaging him, too afraid of what they did not know.

“If I break a watch,” one told them, shaking his head. “Or even one of the great factory machines, then I can make it work again. It may take time, and effort, and money, but I can do it. If I break you – well, I do not know how to make you live again.”

They were sworn to secrecy, though Bard suspected that soon enough others would hear the stories, even if they did not believe (for who would?). Their hands, stained with oil and years of labour, were all shaking by the time that they left the workshops, the men and women often pale, still blinking in bemusement, everything that they had once believed been proved wrong. Bard took some amusement in the knowledge that he and Thranduil would soon become something of a myth themselves in the world of clocksmithing - no doubt they would be whispering these stories between each other for years to come.

Thranduil took the news that none of them knew how to fix - or even how to examine - his mechanisms graciously, without any real surprise, but Bard could not: that was why, after several of them mentioned the same clocksmith, considering him to be the best of any of them, he booked tickets on the next airship to Tallinn, where his small shop was located, in the heart of the old city.

“He’s booked years in advance,” one clocksmith told them, wiping his hands on a rag. “But he’ll drop everything, when he realises that what you are saying is true.”

Thranduil’s eyes, silver-grey and tired, had been warm when Bard had presented the tickets to him, and he had kissed Bard’s palms with all the same tender gentleness that those awed clocksmiths had touched Thranduil, presented with the miracle of living clockwork.

_“You touch me as if I were something special,” Bard had said to him once, early on, stretched out naked against each other under sheets._

_“You are,” Thranduil had answered, his mouth finding the curve of his ribcage. “Rare and precious, more so than you will ever know.”_

 

* * *

 

Tallinn was a beautiful city, and perhaps one day Bard would wish that he had spent more time admiring and exploring it, but there was a nervous agitation in his chest that stopped him from even considering it - he did not know how much time they had, half-convinced that he might only have minutes left - which of course, was not the case. It had taken them hours to find the workshop, unmarked and half hidden in the cobbled streets of Tallinn’s old town. He had expected clocksmiths to be better advertised, when first they had set out on their journey, but he was learning differently now: more often than not they were run down, shabby places, half-forgotten. 

The art of clockwork was dying, Bard knew: the knowledge, passed on hand to hand, was slowly dying away as people chose to run old tech to the point of collapse rather than paying to have it restored, cared for.

The same could be said for much of the world, really.

This man’s fame was enough to keep him busy, but those who hired him knew how to find him, and it was a long time before they stumbled across him, quite by accident in the end. The old man had been unwilling to see them at all at first, his workshop piled high with other commissions, but in the end Thranduil, with all his calm patience ( _like water against stone, Bard had always thought, gentle but determined, until whatever stood against him was worn away_ ) finally convinced the man to let them in.

After that, it did not take long to catch his attention, and Bard huffed a sigh as the clocksmith turned a small but bright worktable light on to better see the dying heart of the man he loved, Thranduil stretched out across the workbench, staring up at the dim rafters above them, as if not really there at all.

There had been hope flickering still in Bard’s chest, until the old man had shook his head.

“I can see why they sent you to me,” he wheezed, sitting back on his stool. “And perhaps once man had the skill to repair you, when we still made things of our own, rather than scavenging the scraps left behind by former generations. But now? No. Those gifts are long lost to time.”

He sounded genuinely aggrieved to admit it, and Bard swallowed down his frustration, taking Thranduil’s hand in his.

“There is no way?” he asked, biting hard at his lower lip to keep himself from yelling.

The old man hesitated, for just a moment, watching them carefully. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet, as if he were afraid of someone hearing them, though they were the only three in the workshop, full of oily and broken bits of machinery and strange, intricate tools whose functions Bard could have only guessed at.

“Of course, there are stories,” he said, eventually. “There have always been stories, and perhaps some of them are true – I wouldn’t know. I have only collected them, as and when they have been whispered to me. Stories of strange creatures and tech, from around the world, things that man has _never_ had the ability to create. Things that exist still, legacies of a past that we have no record of. No one understands them, not even now, and many have forgotten what they truly are, but…”

“The legacies of the Cogsmiths,” Thranduil continued, as the clocksmith trailed off.

“Were they real?”

Bard swallowed, his eyes on Thranduil’s face, calm, giving nothing away. The other clocksmiths had asked him similar questions, and he had always refused to say anything more, refused to answer how his gears had first been set into place, why he had been placed on this earth, whether all the stories were true or not. But now there was defeat in the line of his shoulders, and an acceptance too, and after a long moment, he nodded.

“Aye,” he said, a colloquialism that he had picked up from Bard. “I never met them, for I rose later, but they were real. The stories – they all came from truth. And there is much still that has been forgotten, that I never knew myself. We… we were not told anything more than we needed to know.”

“What happened to them, to the Cogsmiths? Did they truly leave, as the story goes?”

Thranduil shook his head.

“I do not know. They may have left, or died, or hidden away – there has never been an answer.”  
  
The clocksmith’s eyes were closed, the corners of his mouth curved upwards, just a little.

Thranduil sighed, as if with his breath were expelling his secrets from his chest, and the clocksmith continued, his voice half-wild with longing.

“It is said that only they knew how to create life from nothing, that only they knew the secrets of keeping tech working for millennia, perhaps even indefinitely. And we do not know what happened to them – indeed, for many years I did not believe that they ever really existed, but I see you now before me, and I wonder now if they did, what truth there is in these stories that I have heard, in the strange pieces of tech that have been brought to me over the years.”

Something hard and unforgiving fluttered in Bard’s chest.

“Do you think,” he said, his eyes on Thranduil, before either of the other two could say anything more. “Do you think that, if we searched, we might find one of them? Or something that they left behind, something to fix you?

“Bard-” Thranduil began, his voice a little pained.

But he shook his head, unwilling to listen to any protests.

“It doesn’t matter the time it takes, Thranduil, or the places we may have to go – we’ll follow every lead, we’ll track one of them down, we’ll find out what we need to do to…”

And then Thranduil sighed, and for a moment Bard thought that they would argue, but then Thranduil smiled, just a little, and shook his head.

“You’re a determined creature,” he said, fondly, and Bard squeezed Thranduil’s cool fingers with his own.

“Aye,” he answered, the corner of his own mouth twitching upwards. “That’s why you love me.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, Bard’s eyes never leaving Thranduil’s, searching for those almost imperceptible lines of gold that threaded through the silver-grey. The clocksmith was watching them, his brow still furrowed, and pity in his eyes.

“My mother used to tell me about Vaire,” he said, eventually, running a hand through his fine, white hair. “Strange to think of it now.”

“Which one was Vaire?” Bard whispered. Though once his mother had told him of the fourteen Cogsmiths, he did not think that even she had remembered all the names, and he did not recall much of what she had said, just vague recollections and the feeling of warm safety that always came to him, unbidden, when he remembered being in his mother’s arms.

“They called her the Weaver,” the clocksmith told them. “But she was a lot more than that, you know – she made the great looms from which industry first blossomed in this world. She was the first, apparently, to offer us her gifts, and it was said that when she showed the people of the world how to use those looms the history of the world was written in the fabric that she created.

“My mother was a weaver,” he continued, his voice slow and soothing. “They still exist, you know – weavers. The great factories hadn’t gotten rid of quite all of them, not back then, anyway. There used to be a shrine to Vaire, many years ago, just a small thing in the heart of the city. It is gone now. But the weavers worshipped her still, despite the fact that I don’t think many of them even really knew what she did. We’ve all forgotten, but there were traces of them once, spread out across the world. I've been investigating those stories, in an off-hand way, for most of my life, and I can promise you that whilst most of the world has forgotten, there are traces still to be followed, and if you did want to follow them, then- well, I know where you should start.”

 

* * *

 

The journey south to Athens was not a long one, not compared to many that they would make in the coming months – just one long, winding pathway along the iron road that had crossed Europe for as long as anyone could remember, the roaring engine of the great belching steam train leaving Bard with a painful headache by the time they finally disembarked, many days after they had first settled in their narrow cabin in the station in Tallinn.

_“Do you think we’ll find anything?” he had whispered into Thranduil’s hair that first night, pressed together in a tiny bunk, legs tangled, so close he could hear the faltering clockwork of his chest. It was the first time he asked that question, and it would not be the last. Thranduil hadn’t answered, that time – he never answered that question._

The clocksmith at Tallinn had shown them the old photographs he had, stored away in the back, of the great statue in front of the Medicine Hall, hidden deep in the heart of the city. It was one of the three leads that they had finally concluded were actually viable, the ones that they might have actually been able to follow up on, and when they finally made their way through the warm, early morning streets of the Plaka to its great and columned entrance, they had stopped for a moment, staring up at the serene and weathered face cut into marble towering above them.

“Do you think she really looked like that?” Bard whispered, taking Thranduil’s hand, stroking his fingers along the soft skin of his palm. Thranduil smiled, just a little.

“I doubt it,” he answered.

The Medicine Hall’s historians were happy to show them to the great library, to tell them all that they knew about Nienna - which, it emerged, was not all that much at all. The legend was that it was she who had founded this guild so many centuries ago, though the historians said this with pleasant little smiles, as if they were certain that this was mere fable – and Bard could not be irritated at that, for it was not so long ago that he had believed the exact same thing. She had come to the learned men of Athens, it was told, with great machines of healing, with things to explore and cure the frailties of the human body that mankind had not even conceived at that point. She had brought her gifts and given them freely, and man had embraced and advanced them, learning to cure that which had not even been discovered.

The historians showed them the museum of old mechanisms and the books listing the long history of advancements: they showed them the early machines, huge and cumbersome, whose clockwork mechanisms had long since slowed to a stop, and after a while Bard’s enthusiasm began to wane in favour of a deep fear, a longing sadness.

“We’re so fragile,” he whispered, pressed close against Thranduil’s side so that the dusty old men with their long beards could not hear him. Thranduil moved closer to, as if sensing in that instinctive way of his that Bard needed comfort, not distance, now.

“As am I,” he replied. “Just in a different way, I think.”

But Bard shook his head, unwilling to hear that.

“You’re not,” he hissed, through his teeth, his voice tainted a little with frustration. “You’re the most incredible thing that I have ever known.”

Thranduil halted them then, the old historian carrying on ahead of them, not noticing. Thranduil pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, his voice so low that Bard could barely hear it.

“And it is sweet of you to say,” was what he said, his breath warm against Bard’s skin. “But it is not true, you know.”

They did not learn what they wanted from the Medicine Hall, but it was early days, and they did not let themselves feel too frustrated at their failure. The old men shook their heads when Bard had asked whether they had ever studied clockwork life, if their advancements had ever been focused on the expansion of the mechanical – they had looked at him with incredulity, muttering to each other at the strangeness of this request.

“I mean, the mechanical insects I have heard stories about,” Bard tried to clarify, sounding desperate even to his own ears. “Or the birds, those that are left – but once there were more, weren’t there? And perhaps even living men, too? None of your predecessors have ever looked into them?”

They had looked at him as if here were mad: he wondered, for a moment, if he was.

“It has never been our focus,” one had eventually said, looking him up and down, with just a touch of judgement. “Why should we, learned men that we are, look to false life and untrue stories, when there are still so many questions left to answer for the truly living?”

Bard had swallowed his anger and pulled Thranduil from the building, back through the narrow streets to their small apartment from whose narrow windows one could see the lights of the acropolis, and he had pressed kisses along his collarbones until he had fought back his tears, and had whispered to Thranduil over and over again.

“Yours is not a false life,” he told him, his voice catching. “Your life is as true as anyone’s.”

“I know,” Thranduil told him, pulling him up so that Bard’s face was buried in Thranduil’s neck. “I have never doubted that.”

 

* * *

 

Their next stop was Cairo, the second of the clocksmith’s three leads: they saw the Great Pyramids before they saw anything else, before the sprawl of the vast city came into view, the locomotive chugging slowly through the sand. But the old Gods of man were not their interest – Thranduil half had to drag Bard to see them, towering far above them, for Bard was determined only to follow the leads, to see nothing of the places that they were going.

“My love, we may never be in this place again,” Thranduil told him gently, in the grey light before the dawn, when all was soft and gentle and Bard woke up in excitement, determined to get on with the day. “Let us see what there is of it now, so that we will not regret what we have missed later.”

So Bard relented to a day of sightseeing, despite the itching anxiety in his chest, for he could rarely bring himself to deny Thranduil anything when he asked for it, for he asked for so little. And he had to admit, that he found himself fascinated by the place, the life and noise and hot beauty of it all, and he followed Thranduil quite gladly, sweating through his shirt. They saw those pyramids, so engraved in world fame, and the Sphinx too, and the great old clockwork timepieces that stretched out of the sand at great heights at the outskirts of the city, tall and old and no longer working, but a testament to former glory. But the next day found themselves in an abandoned square on the outskirts of the city, dust in the mouths as they stared up at the broken down façade of a building long since abandoned.

“The clocksmith said that it was still a working temple, didn’t he?” Bard asked, quietly, and Thranduil nodded.

“Perhaps, when he heard the story, it was.”

The door was not locked: the old wood pushed open at their touch with a scream of rusted hinges, and they moved quietly and quickly into the dark interior, dusty and rich with the smell of abandonment. The interior had been stripped of anything of note, just blank walls and some broken furniture – whether the original occupants had taken it all, or thieves and vandals since, they could not be sure.

“It looks like it has been decades since it was abandoned,” Bard said, whispering despite himself. “I thought…”

Thranduil shrugged, moving away to the wall, running fingers along an old and faded fresco – grey cloth, fluttering in the wind, and a distant river was all that Bard could make out.

“Her name was Este,” he said, quietly. “I wonder who she was, and what she gave the world. I had thought that the priestesses might be able to tell us more, but…”

“They’re gone,” Bard finished. “And I am not sure how we would go about tracking them down.”

Thranduil was still looking at the wall, brushing dust from the surface, revealing more of the painting. Beneath his fingers a slender face was appearing, the hint of a smile, a veil falling to the floor, cranes and falling water picked out in pale colours. There was a story there, Bard knew, a history, a tale that spanned for centuries, but there was no way to find it now, no way to trace it.

“The world has mostly forgotten them, hasn’t it?” he said, in the quiet, and Thranduil nodded.

“So it would seem.”

A bitterness welled up inside him, one that he could not quite fight, and he looked down at his fists instead, clenched tight in anger.

“It’s wrong.”

But Thranduil just shrugged, unconcerned. “Perhaps. But there must always be things forgotten, to make way for new things. If we didn’t forget, we would only ever replicate, and things would stay the same.”

The corner of Bard’s mouth twitched upwards, despite himself, and he leant against the back wall, closing his eyes for a moment.

“Stop being so wise,” he said, and he might have said more, but there was a shifting against his shoulder, and a chink of light fell across the floor from a doorway that Bard had not noticed, which he had unintentionally rested against. The light fell against that pale and half-faded face painted on the wall, and for a moment the lines that made up what was left of her eyes seemed to gleam.

Bard shouldered the door again, harder, and it fell open, old dry wood shifting easily. The light was half-blinding after even just a few minutes indoors, and Bard stumbled through the open door, into an internal courtyard.

He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the light.

Before him, a courtyard of dark grey granite, polished and smooth, time having had no effect on the finish; a fountain, long run dry but tall and beautiful in the centre; plants, huge and blooming, growing up all the walls, tall and overgrown and lush and beautiful. Bard started in surprise as Thranduil pressed against his back, his arms wrapping around Bard’s middle, his chin on his shoulder.

“Someone is still watering the plants,” he said, to the curve of Bard’s neck. “Someone is still looking after this place, as best they can. They may not remember why, or what it all once meant, but they have not forgotten – not entirely.”

Bard closed his eyes to the heat, to the glare, to the flowers blooming in an abandoned temple, and breathed.

 

* * *

 

It was three long weeks by train down the length of Africa, three weeks before they reached their next destination, the last of the clocksmith’s leads that he had been able to give them. They spent the money on a bigger cabin this time, but Bard was still more than ready to leave their confined space by the time the train finally pulled into Cape Town. The cabin was always just a little too warm, and the sound of Thranduil’s faltering heart seemed to echo all the louder in the confined space. It was in these weeks that Bard had begun to realise the length of the task ahead of them – that this was more than just a brief trip with a quick answer.

He had believed, deep down, that the cure for Thranduil’s ailing clockwork would be an easy one to find, buried in a library or deep in the mind of a learned priestess, easy to access once they had found the right person or place.

But his hope was already beginning to falter: he hadn’t expected it to be so difficult, had not expected Thranduil to never want to talk about it – every time Bard tried to raise it with him he would shut it down, just shaking his head or pressing a kiss to Bard’s bare shoulder in the hopes of distracting him.

Cape Town was a bustling as he had expected, and more so -  but they spent little time in the city centre. Thranduil was used to cities, it was true, but he never liked to linger, always moving through them to the quieter alleys, to places where eyes would not rest on him for too long. And they were not here for the city, not this time: it was what lay outside the city that interested them.

The old clocksmith hadn’t really known much of the detail, only the story itself, but some reading on their long train ride had been enough to enlighten them of the Cape Floristic Region, the only remaining of the world’s once verdant floristic regions, the rest slowly having been destroyed over the decades by the pollution pouring from the cities. It had only been called that recently, of course – before that, it had been known as Vana’s fields.

But what the clocksmith had told them was the rumour, lingering still, that the reason that they had come into existence in the first place had been the interference of the Cogsmiths, and when they reached their destination, and looked out across the teeming mass of life, the thousands of plants that could no longer be found anywhere else in the world, they were struck with a wonder, and Bard found that he could not believe that anything else could be true.

Their guide showed them briefly around the main pathways of the place, chattering confidently about the variety on display, pointing out the flowers that were extinct everywhere else in the world, the rare insects: at one point a polecat cut across their path, sparing only a moment of interest for them before disappearing into the shrubbery again. It was strange to see an animal so content and unafraid: Bard was used to the rare creatures he had come across in Factory City, the angry dogs and malnourished foxes, creatures tainted by the city, in one way or another. With his back to the smog that lingered over Cape Town, the thick and stinking cloud that covered every city now, Bard was almost able to believe that they were in another time, a better time – a time before mechanics had taken over the minds of man.

“Why did they call it Vana’s fields?” he asked, after a time, and the guide laughed.

“Just an old tale!” he laughed, flashing the pair of them a smile. “Those old Cogsmith stories, you know? She came here and saw the potential of the land and made for us a beautiful landscape for meditation and peace. Nonsense, of course – although no one scientist has ever been able to agree on why the plants here have been able to thrive here, when they have died in so many other places.”

“Although,” he remarked, after a moment of silence. “There was a professor here, not too long back, asking the same questions – from Buenos Aires, I believe. Apparently she was doing some funny kind of study on these kind of stories. she was telling me all about it, seemed to believe that they were real – can you believe that?”

Bard hummed, and the two of quickly detached themselves from the guide, glancing sidelong at each other as they padded through the shrubbery, avoiding the delicate flowers. Thranduil seemed distracted by something, the longer that they walked through the plants, the flowers all seeming to turn towards them, though Bard could not believe that they really were. After a time, when they were far away enough from the guide that they could not be seen and remote enough to not be interrupted, he stopped, and without explanation lay on the earth, his ear pressed to the ground.

“What are you doing?” Bard asked, frowning a little, but Thranduil put up his hand, his face screwed in concentration.

“There is something deep beneath the earth,” he said, after a long moment of silence. “Some mechanism, working away.”

“What do you think it is doing?” Bard asked, and Thranduil shrugged as he rose to his feet once more.

“Turning the earth, perhaps. Fuelling it. But if I were to guess, I would say that whatever it is doing is responsible for all this growth, for all the flowers and the mosses and the plants that have managed to thrive here, when they are dying all over the world.”

“Vana’s fields,” Bard said, quietly. “A gift with plants, and flowers. And who knows what else was here before?”

Thranduil nodded, as if he were about to say anything else, but he was interrupted by a whirring in the distance, and the two of them froze for a moment as what looked like a small black cloud appeared on the horizon. It took only a moment for it to reach them, too soon for them to do anything, but they did not have to – the small swarm of insects (for that was what it was) enveloped them quickly.

Bard put his hands up to protect his face, but they paid no attention to him – the small creatures ignored him completely, flocking instead around Thranduil. It was only when Bard moved closer that he realised that they were not insects as he knew them, but creatures of clockwork – and such miraculous creatures they were! Their shells seemed to be made of glass, brightly coloured and transparent, and beneath that hard exterior ticked and whirred an array of tiny cogs, so small that Bard could barely make them out.

How many people knew these were here? These tiny insects, hidden among the millions of others, only brought together now by Thranduil’s presence – and Bard wondered how they had known, how they had sensed him, if they had heard his faltering heart on the wind – but then Thranduil laughed, a bright and joyful sound, and it cast all other thoughts from his mind.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this,” Thranduil said, his face lighter than Bard had seen it in quite a long time. He held out a hand, and the insects swarmed around it, their touch as light as a kiss against his skin.

“In all your long years?” Bard teased, and Thranduil nodded, glancing at him, the flutter of iridescent wings casting a thousand colours across his pale skin.

“Even in all my long years,” he replied, his voice strangely and suddenly solemn, his voice dropping to something quiet, that Bard almost couldn’t hear over the buzzing of the wings.

“Never enough time, and always too much of it, at the same time.”

The smile he quirked was bitter, and full of a peculiar warmth that Bard had no name for.

 “That was the last of what the clocksmith told us,” Thranduil said, in the quiet, later that night when it was just the two of them alone in their small room.

“There is an airship leaving for Buenos Aires in the morning,” Bard whispered to the jut of Thranduil’s hip, in the end, for lack of anything better to say. “A professor, that we can find, if we try, who might be able to tell us more.”

Thranduil didn’t answer, not immediately, and Bard pressed a kiss to the cool skin beneath his mouth.

"Shall we take it?” he asked, as Thranduil's hand carded through his hair.

And Thranduil nodded, slowly and silently, in that dark room, with just the two of them to witness it.


	2. Chapter 2

The trip across the Atlantic was not one lightly taken: by sea the journey was long and arduous, and even by air there was a peril in the harsh winds and frequent storms. This was a significantly longer journey by air than Bard had ever taken before, but as they arrived at the airstrip Bard found himself hit with a sudden and unexpected confidence as he caught sight of the ship in front of them.

“Orome’s airships,” Bard said, reading the airline name printed on the side of the great mechanical beast in front of them with a small smile, as they boarded the airship the next morning. “Do you think they know what that means?”

Thranduil smiled, just a little.

“He did create the first airships,” he answered, keeping his voice low as they walked across the gangplank to the great, hovering behemoth of a ship, the gently throbbing fabric sides of it kept in check by steel girders wider across than Bard himself was, the sound of its engine a muted roar. “It was he who showed us how to ride the air, the sea, the land – maybe the person who chose the name remembered that.”

“Aye,” Bard replied, patting the doorframe gently as they passed through it, into the cavernous insides of the ship. “What else do you know about him?”

It seemed to Bard more and more often as they continued this trip that Thranduil was a well, left untapped: there were huge depths to him that Bard had no conception of, vast swathes of his history that remained a mystery, and knowledge within that timeless mind that he could barely conceive. It had never concerned him before now, but in that longing, desperate part of his heart that loved with full tenacity, he knew there lingered also a doubt and a fear, fuelled by this unknown: why did he know so little of the man that he loved, and could he ever truly know as much about Thranduil’s endless life as he, in turn, knew about Bard’s?

But he was a pragmatist, built to weather storms and shore up the damage after it was done, and he did not let those fears own him – he had been taught that problems were there to be fixed, after all, and if he was afraid of not knowing enough about Thranduil, then he must overcome his own reticence to ask, for how was he supposed to learn if he did not.

Thranduil drew level with him then, now that space allowed it, and took his hand, with that singular tenderness that still baffled Bard, when their fingers brushed so lightly that they might have been feathers blown in a breeze.

“They say that he was one of the last to leave this earth,” Thranduil told him, his voice quiet, private, meant only for him. “They say that he rode his machines from one reach of the world to the other, visiting every land, every people, every valley and mountain under the sky. They say he stayed long after the others began to disappear, and that he rode horses made of clockwork that could outrace a shooting star, could outrace the eagles above and the swiftest fishes in the rivers and the fleetest of predators. They told me that he loved this land, despite his clenched fists, that he was quick to anger but longer to love, that he believed in peace, but was also willing to fight to achieve it.”

“Who are they?” Bard asked, a frown pulling between his eyes. “Who are these they, that told you these stories?”

But Thranduil could not answer: the porter had come over, to check their tickets and to usher them and their scant luggage out of the way and into their cabin for take-off, and by the time they had settled in the plush velvet seats the moment had passed, and Bard could find no reason to bring it up again.

 

* * *

 

 

The professor proved elusive, hard to track down. They had only the scantest of information on them, and almost no real leads in reality. A female professor, from Buenos Aires, who had an interest in the ancient clockwork that they had possibly never even published on…

It was not quite as easy a task as Bard might have hoped.

In fact, they probably never would have found her – indeed, more than likely that that would be the case, given how little she _wanted_ to be found – were it not for the fact that she decided to be found.

Apparently you ask too many questions in the academic circuit, and eventually, everyone knows what you are after. Bard had never encountered a gossiper group of individuals in his entire life, and he wasn’t entirely certain that he wanted to spend any more time with them.

Her hair was long, and silver grey, worn loose around her shoulders; her eyes were shrewd, bright blue, and kindly enough that Bard was reminded vaguely of older relatives that he had known and lost over the many years of his life. She approached them as they were eating their fourth _asado_ of the week (Thranduil was rather unimpressed by Bard’s desire to keep eating the same thing over and over, but he had never tasted anything quite as glorious in his life), in a small place tucked around the corner from their hotel, where no one paid them too much attention or asked them anything about themselves, which was entirely the way that they preferred it.

“I hear,” she said, pulling up a chair and startling them from their comfortable silence. “That you have been trying to find an inquiring professor who has an interest in clockwork.”

They stared at her, momentarily bemused, but she seemed to have been distracted, staring instead at Thranduil: the pale sheet of his hair had fallen forward, across his face, which obstructed his view but kept his face mostly hidden. The long days and hard nights had taken their toll out on the normally inexhaustible man: though his face gave no indication as such, it was clear enough to Bard, and he could understand his desire to hide.

“Well, I’ll be,” the old woman said, leaning forward, the long grey sleeves of her blouse skimming the table surface as she made an abortive reach towards Thranduil only to pull back. “A clockwork man, as I live and breathe. I thought you were all gone.”

Thranduil had frozen – not from fear, but seemingly more from a cautious interest, for he seemed to lean forward just a little more, watching the woman as if waiting for her next movement.

“How do you know that?” Bard asked, and the lady turned to him with a rather disarmingly charming smile, before leaning back in her chair and pulling out a long pipe from her bag.

“I know many things, young man, and most of them are not things that other people know.”

Bard blinked.

“That doesn’t exactly answer my question, you know.”

But the lady just smiled, and lit her pipe.

“I am rather interested to know your story,” she told Thranduil, taking a long puff. “But I suspect that it is a long one, that would be better shared in a more private place. At least I now know why it is that the two of you have been searching for me – and you shouldn’t be surprised that I heard of it before you heard of me. Whilst I am technically affiliated with a university, I am not exactly widely published. I rather prefer to work under the radar, and I’m sure that you’ll work out the reasons for that in the fullness of time.”

She exhaled, a mouthful of smoke, but rather than dissipating it formed instead the shape of a feather, drifting just a little in the air, before slowly rising to the ceiling. Bard followed it with his eyes, wondering.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, quite politely but for the fact that there was no question of them obeying in her tone. “I would very much appreciate it if you came to my house, tomorrow. I would like to take a look at you, and hear about where you have come from, and make a record of all that you know and have seen. And in return I might be able to help you, too – at the very least, I can share with you both my stories, too.”

She tapped her pipe out in the ashtray with a smile and a nod, already standing to rise when Bard found his voice again.

“Who are you?” he asked, quickly, for she already seemed to be turning towards the door.

She smiled, shaking her head, before reaching into her bag and pulling out a card, laying it on the table between the two of them.

“How forgetful of me,” she remarked. “I’ll see you around ten o’clock tomorrow, if it is all the same. I’ll make tea.”

And with that she was gone, leaving just two confused men and a business card printed simply with an address and a phone number: no indication of any company worked for, or services offered: just those details, and a name, in silver font against a grey card.

_Gandalf Greyhame._

 

* * *

 

 

“Can we trust her?” Bard asked the line of Thranduil’s spine, later that night, the two of them having retired in a disquieting silence.

“I don’t know,” was Thranduil’s answer, whispered against cotton sheets, Bard’s hand stroking a long line down the length of his side.

“I love you,” Bard told him, pressing the entire length of his front against Thranduil’s back, his arms wrapping around the clockwork man’s middle as if in a desperate attempt to keep him close, to stop him from leaving. And Thranduil could tell, Thranduil always could, for he twisted around in the tight embrace to press a kiss to Bard’s forehead, his hands finding the lines of Bard’s shoulders, squeezing gently.

“I know,” he told Bard. “And I you. It is alright, you know.”

Bard did not say anything in reply, just buried his face against Thranduil’s throat, where it was always cool, and soft, and comforting, where he always belonged, where he was always safe.

“I know you don’t like the idea,” Thranduil said, quietly. “But it is alright. Things are always alright. I am one of the last of a dying species: it is no wonder that she interested in me. She knows something, and we may need to hear it, and all she wants in return is to have a record of everything that I am, so that in the future, they will be able to tell stories of my marvellous creation.”

His voice was light, aiming for humour, Bard shook his head vehemently.

“They won’t need to,” he said, his voice far surer than he himself felt. “You’ll still be there.”

 

* * *

 

 

Gandalf’s house was a small and pretty little thing, tucked away in back streets but somehow quiet inside, despite the bustle on the street beyond it. Gandalf welcomed them in with a broad smile, a knowing glance, and the comforting smell of herbal tea that Bard did not know the name for but that he found soothing nonetheless – though it did not stop him from holding Thranduil’s hand so tightly that his fingers were already starting to turn white. She led them through to a narrow but brightly lit living room, and Bard found himself settling into a wide, cream coloured sofa without quite meaning to relax as much as he did.

Bard sipped his tea and watched Thranduil watch Gandalf; it was a little strange, seeing his lover's eyes so clouded and confused, and he couldn't bring himself to look anywhere else as long as he looked that way.

“I cannot tell what you are,” Thranduil said, in the end. “I know that you are not a clockwork man as I, but I am quite certain that you are not mortal, either.”

Gandalf smiled, and replaced her tea cup on the side table. 

“Indeed, and most astute of you to notice. As you said, I am neither one thing nor the other, and nothing in between that you will ever have heard of, either.”

Bard frowned, just a little.

“Do you always speak in riddles?”

Gandalf turned to him then, those blue eyes sharp, the corner of her mouth turning upwards, looking more entertained than offended.

“I have found that riddles serve me very well, my young friend.”

Bard bristled, despite himself: though he may have been young compared to Thranduil, he was a grown man still, and though Gandalf hadn't sound patronising that is how Bard took it, sitting up just a little straighter in the sofa, the two of them watching each other carefully.

“Enough,” Thranduil said, a little more commandingly than Bard expected, irritated too, though Bard could not understand why. “Tell us what you brought us here to say, and be done with it.”

Gandalf turned back to him, his eyes warm. 

“You know, of course, that the first creator made the Cogsmiths, do you not?” Thranduil nodded. “Well, of course you do, for there was a time when even the smallest child knew those stories. But what was often left untold were those of us created to aid the Cogsmiths on their way: not with the same level of power or skill for creation, but some gifts of our own, none the less. Once there were many of us: now I know of only a couple, and even them I have not heard from in several years. Like you, I might well be the last of my kind, my friend.”

Bard wouldn't have noticed the way that Thranduil swallowed, something more than nervousness and less than fear flitting around his eyes for a moment, like an insect: there was empathy tangled up in it too, too confusing a combination for Bard to look at for too long.

“I have heard of you,” Thranduil said, slowly. “Though the stories were confused.”

Gandalf didn't say anything: she just stared at him, her eyes drifting eventually to the window, the glass steamed up and damp in the morning light, as she waited for him to say more. It took longer than Bard might have expected, too: it seemed to take Thranduil a while to collect himself.

“They said that you were made from the spirit of the clockwork, but never grounded in the immortal metals, the immortal wires," he said, after a moment, and Bard made a mental note to ask Thranduil later what those things were. "They said that you took no one form, and could change at will – which was how you lived eternal. But they said too that you were lost for it if you had no purpose.”

“It’s true enough,” Gandalf agreed, amicably. “That’s why I’ve dedicated my last few centuries to examining the slow decline of the remnants of the Cogsmith’s work.”

Bard couldn't help but interject.

“So you have not always looked like this?”

“Indeed, no,” she told him with a cheery grin. “Sometimes a pilgrim, on long roads; other times a crow, following the storms; I have been men and women and neither and both, animals and trees and plants; for a time I was a river, for another a mountain, until I grew tired of never being able to move anything other than my deepest roots. I have been in this form for seventy-something years now, and soon enough I will take leave of it and turn to something else.”

And as she spoke Bard thought for a moment that she could see all the shades of those previous lives on her face: those birds and beasts and plants and mountain ranges, dancing across a tanned and weathered face, so that she seemed in that moment to be so much more than a frail old woman. No, right then she might have been a God for the strength that she exuded, the confidence, the wonder that Bard took from the sight of her, and in the end he had to look away, his mouth dry, his head heaving with waves of wonder at what this creature truly was. 

“How long have you lived?” he breathed, in the end, and she smiled.

“Longer even than your clockwork man,” she told him. “Longer than I even care to remember.”

Her voice was just a little bittersweet, regrets tied up in beautiful memories, and her eyes turned once more to the window, as if she were searching for something - or someone - that she had long ago lost. 

“My clockwork is failing,” Thranduil said, quite suddenly, to the silent room. 

Gandalf just nodded.

“Aye. It happens to all of it, in time.”

Bard watched her: there was no spark in her eye, so glint of hope. He had crossed the sea in the hopes that this woman might be able to provide answers, might have known a way to cure Thranduil, but he could tell already that they had come in vain.

“You don’t know anything about how the clockwork works, do you?” he said, trying not to sound as disconsolate as he felt. 

“My sweet child,” she told him, shaking her head. “I know vast amounts. But do I know how to fix it, how to prolong it? No. Those were gifts only the Cogsmiths had, as I am sure you know.”

Thranduil did not say anything - once more he seemed to simply take a breath and absorb their failure, just as he had done in every other clocksmith workshop, at every other stage of this journey. He did not seem disappointed, not truly, not in the way that Bard was feeling: he closed his eyes, for a moment, and when he opened them again they held a warm sort of satisfaction, one that Bard didn't understand. The longer this odd morning wore on, he couldn't help but reflect, the more and more out of his depth he felt.

“I would tell you my story,” he told her, the corner of his mouth turning upwards, just a little. “But it would take many days, and I am afraid that we are running quite rapidly out of time.”

She nodded.

“I know,” she said, and her voice was warm with affection. “I can see it in your eyes. In both of your eyes, in fact.”

They glanced at each other then, and if sensing the confusion in Bard's mind, Thranduil reached out and squeezed his hand, just once.

“Write it down for me, as you go,” Gandalf said, startling the two of them just a little. “You can send it to me, when you are done, when you are happy with the story that you want to be preserved. I will keep it secret, keep it safe, until the time comes when your story is ready to be told.”

“You think that a day will come?” Bard asked, surprised, and she nodded, her gaze going once more to the window, leaving Bard to wonder what it was that she had lost along the way that gave her that constant air of searching, of roaming, as if she had only sat still this long in order to tell them all that she could. He could see the bird in her, even now, desperate to fly.

“All things come in cycles, my dear,” she said, and her voice sounded a little tired now. “Everything that we discard we need again, in time, and none of us can tell what the future will hold. I think one day the old clockwork will be called on in ways that we can't possibly imagine now - and when that day comes, your stories, and the artefacts that I have collected, may make the difference."

 And with that she pulled from beneath her chair a tray, on which a number of small things nestled in white linen, and as she passed it to them Bard felt rather than saw the reverence with which she held them, the intake of breath from Thranduil when he saw what was displayed before him, and he leant in as close as he could to see what secrets Gandalf had been squirreling away for all these years.

“What are these?” Bard asked, his eyes fixed on the tray in front of him.

"Remnants that I have collected over the years," she said, quietly. "Insects, oysters, parts of mechanisms, everything in between that I could get my hands on. One day they may be useful, and until then, I feel better knowing they are here, together, than being slowly buried out in the wide world, apart from each other."

Thranduil had glanced at the tray at first, but then his eyes had been caught by a line of larger cogs that lay along one side, his eyes wide. 

"Those belonged to clockwork men," he whispered, and for a moment his voice was so full of a grief that Bard had no way of understanding, one built on centuries of loss, of loneliness, and all that he could do was reach out, and stroke a light line down Thranduil's arm, a weak attempt at comfort. 

"The last of my people," he said, after he recovered himself enough. 

Gandalf's smile was a sadder, now.

“Where did you find these?” Bard asked, reverentially, as his fingers skimmed over the cogs, arranged with such care, so beautiful in their preservation: his hands drifted close, but they never touched, for they felt sacred, and even though they had long been separated from their original owners Bard felt that he might have been touching those men and women, should he touch those cogs.

“War City,” the old woman told him, with that same strange and small smile that seemed to mean so much more than Bard could feasibly conceive. “That’s where I found them – among the ruins.”

* * *

 

 

The only approach to the great and only Antarctic City-State was by the vast steam ferry that made its slow passage across the sea only once every month, which was the time it took for it to make the entire round trip. By this stage, a two week journey didn’t sound all that long to Bard, not compared to some of their others, though the conditions were far from ideal – unlike the trains and the airships, this old ferry was a constant hive of noise, throbbing loudly, the cacophony so omnipresent that he found it slipping into his unconscious state, so that all his dreams were conducted to a beat, to the slow pulse of the ship around them.

There were few people travelling to Antarctica at this time of year: in fact, there were rarely that many people trying to get to War City other than the occasional merchant and tinkerer. More frequent were those trying to leave.

The city itself he first caught sight of in the distance a few days before they were due to make port: though they passed along the land on which it lay, there was nowhere to dock along the inhospitable coastline – they were forced to carry on for miles until the ice formed a natural bay, in which they could safely put down anchor. The sight of it was enough to fill him with a nervous energy, and he paced the ship deck back and forth for hours afterwards, long after it had drifted once more out of sight between the jutting icebergs and dark slashes of rock. The place was fortified, great walls reaching out of the ice to support the dome that protected the city from the worst of the weather, the glass that formed the curve of it thicker than Bard’s arm, by all accounts. Covered in solar panels to keep the city running, it had seemed to Bard like an armoured beetle from this distance, crouching in the snow as if to keep itself warm against the land which seemed to try so hard to destroy it. Each year, by all accounts, the place took more and more damage, and murmured voices now wondered if it was even still sustainable as a city, whether or not it was worth trying to maintain it, whether it would simply be better to cut it off, and leave it to wither and pass from this world and this time, like a dying blackberry at the cusp of winter.

“War City,” he had muttered at the first sight of it, and Thranduil had nodded.

Thranduil had come to find him after several hours of pacing, his presence enough to halt his tiring movements. The clockwork man had brought a map of the coastline that he had coaxed from the captain, and he showed Bard where they were, and the journey they would take through the ice to reach the city.

“We had a different name for it, once,” Thranduil told him, and his voice was strange and faltering. Bard took his hand without thinking, uncertain and even a little afraid of what this uncharacteristic reticence may have meant. That terrible thought came to him once more, that he knew so little about the thousands of years in which the clockwork man had walked this earth, knew so little of all that he had lived through.

“Have you been here before?” he asked, eventually, and Thranduil shook his head.

“It was built for battle,” he said in the end, quietly. “Built to sustain an army, a permanent base. And it flourished after the battle, the scavengers building themselves a city from that which was left behind. I was born after, but my people – back when there were my people – they spoke of it. How the failing hearts of the clockwork men were pulled from their dying bodies and used to make heating systems, how our lives were taken on a battlefield so that thousands of others could live in turn.”

“You don’t sound angry,” Bard answered, somewhat cautiously: Thranduil’s voice was calm, and collected now, but his eyes were still staring out at the towering ice around them.

“I’m not,” he replied, and then the corner of his mouth turned upwards, just a little. “The last known Cogsmith – Tulkas, it was, the last one anyone ever saw – brought the clocksmiths here to stage one last battle against the men that had used their gifts for wrong, and we fell, in the end. All of them, and Tulkas too, and my people died in a desperate attempt to stop man from destroying themselves. To know that their bodies came to use – that from them, so many more have lived – that is not a bad thing. If we are to die, in the end, it is better that death serves a purpose.”

“I don’t understand how you can feel that way,” Bard said, and the words were bitter in his mouth. But Thranduil was smiling still, and his hand tightened around Bard’s.

“There,” he said, pointing at a looming shape in the dim white-grey light: their boat was passing it by slowly, and Bard had barely registered it before now. “See that? You think at first that it is just a projection of rock, of stone and ice – but look closer.”

Bard squinted: his eyes were not as keen as his companion’s, but soon enough the shape of it came into focus, and his eyes widened. Not rock, for no mountain had ever looked like that.

“It is a battleship,” Thranduil told him, his voice nothing more than a whisper. “One of the last of Tulkas’ great weapons of war, that was turned against him when they began to use them not on enemies, but just normal people. They call them casualties, now – that should never have been a part of war. Once it was warrior against warrior, those who had chosen the path of violence, those who knew the way of weapons – not those forced into it by a ruler’s decree, not those who are simply in the way. Tulkas destroyed most of his own creations, in the end – he fought that which he had made, and the last battle was here.”

“What happened to him?” Bard asked, though he was not certain that he wanted to know the answer. Beneath them, the black water foamed against the ship, the hull letting out a groaning sound as they came too close to an unseen jut of ice.

“That, I do not know,” Thranduil replied. “I doubt if anyone still living does.”

“What do you think happened?” Bard pressed, and Thranduil sighed, a low and sorrowful thing.

“I think he died, Bard,” he replied, his voice full of grief. “I think he gave too much, and regretted it all, and fell as he tried to clear the mess that he made – fell by the hand of the enemy or by his own, perhaps, when defeat became inevitable.”

“That’s terrible,” Bard said, quietly, and Thranduil shook his head.

“Perhaps, but death is not so tragic a thing to those of us who have never felt its pull.”

 

* * *

 

 

“So where do we go?” Bard asked, when then long snow-plough shuttle brought them from the port to the beetle of a city. Inside its walls the air was just warm enough to be comfortable without being able to forget the bite of it outside, and it had a slightly plastic, recycled smell that Bard found himself wrinkling his nose at despite himself. It wasn’t unpleasant, not really, but neither was easy to ignore.

He looked across at Thranduil, who was surveying the wide and twisting streets thoughtfully. The buildings around them were in various stages of disrepair, the streets emptier than their size and the time of day warranted. The few photographs that Bard had seen of the place had been old, propagandistic, and the image that he had had in his head of this city was a very different one from the reality.

Colder. Quieter. Shabbier.

“We find a maintenance hatch,” Thranduil said, quietly. “And we find the maintenance team.”

It took a lot longer than they might have thought to achieve such a thing: several times they spotted something which looked like it might have been what they were looking for, only for them to discover that it had been sealed off, or covered by too much refuse for them to shift by themselves. It took several hours and an underhand bribe for them to finally find a small hatch in an alleyway, behind which lay a long and winding set of stairs, narrow, patched together from many different kinds of metal, which led them in the end to a long and twisting set of corridors, spilling off each other in a labyrinth that Bard was quite sure they would get lost in, should they attempt to investigate them. Luckily, a mechanic was within sight, already watching them cautiously.

“These passages are off limits,” he called out, unfriendly, his voice echoing slightly in the passage.

“Is this the way into the undercity?” Thranduil asked, completely ignoring that fact, as the man turned his wrench slowly in his hands, obviously assessing the two of them.

“Who wants to know?”

His eyes were narrowed now, unimpressed.

“I need to examine the internal mechanics of the place,” Thranduil told him, slightly imperiously.

“And why should I let you do that?” he asked (quite fairly, Bard couldn’t help but think, despite himself).

Thranduil paused for a moment, and had you not known him well you might have assumed that he was hesitant, but Bard knew him far better than that: there was an assessment in his cool gaze, a reticence that came from analysing the situation rather than confusion as to what to do next.

“I can give you something that you need,” he said, in the end, and the man shook his head.

“I’m sure you can’t,” the man said, smiling sardonically but not unkindly. “Your money isn’t worth anything here, and unless you’re in a smuggling ring – which I highly doubt, looking at the two of you – then you won’t have anything that I need.”

Thranduil tilted his head to the side, frowning just a little.

“Immortal wire,” he said, quietly, after a long pause, and the mechanic laughed aloud.

“Please, salvage hasn’t found any immortal wire in over a decade, and we were the only city to ever find any to begin with. If you’ve found immortal wire, then I warrant you’ve also discovering flying pigs, and I have to say I’d be happier to have one of those.”

Thranduil just shrugged, a graceful and elegant movement.

“I can give you a metre,” he told him, ignoring his previous statement. “From what I’ve heard, a lot of your primary systems run on it, and I think that a metre would be in very high demand around here.”

The mechanic was frowning, obviously trying to work out what these strangers were talking about and whether or not they were telling the truth – it was clear from his expression that he quite wanted to believe them, but remained highly sceptical. In the end, though, he nodded, still clearly disbelieving.

“If you can get it, I can get you in,” he said, folding his arms. “But I’m staying with you, the whole way – I’m not letting either of you alone for a moment. And you’re not getting close to the primaries, either – it isn’t worth my life if you break anything.”

Thranduil nodded in agreement.

“Turn around,” he told the mechanic, who did with a roll of his eyes – obviously used to dealing with smugglers not willing to show where on their person they stashed their goods. Bard wasn’t entirely sure what immortal wire was, and he had to say, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out – he couldn’t have asked either way, he knew with some certainty, not in front of the mechanic.

Thranduil turned around too, for good measure, and slipped his coat off. On automatic Bard took it from him, coming to stand behind Thranduil so that the bulk of his body was hidden behind Bard’s own. Thranduil did not seem to notice: his fingers were tracing his wrist, gently: beneath his heavy coat he wore only a sleeveless tunic, the cold not having the same effect on a clockwork man as on a mortal.

Pressing gently, Thranduil seemed to find something on his wrist, pushing in some unseen catch so that his skin separated, just as it did in his chest. Bard had not known that Thranduil’s arm had so similar a compartment, and his eyes widened as he watched those slender fingers continue up his arm, opening a seam the entire length of it, until his whole arm was open. Beneath, glowing slightly, were lines of glowing wire, something that might have been bone but for the fact that it shone silver, and a multitude of tiny cogs, slowly moving, strung out in long lines.

Bard wondered, for a moment, if those cogs had moved with more speed before Thranduil’s heart had begun to fail, but that thought fell apart as he suddenly realised exactly what immortal wire must be.

“Thran,” he whispered, as quietly as he could. “Thran, you can’t.”

But Thranduil did not even seem to hear him. His hand hovered around his wrist for a moment before delving into the intricate web beneath his skin, nimble fingers finding the right wire, pulling it with a harsh yank from its moorings and, with great care, slowly unwinding it from the rest.

It still glowed, as Thranduil wrapped it around his fingers, uncoiling it from within, right up until the point when he detached it with another sudden pull from somewhere deep within his shoulder, with only a small wince.

“Thran,” Bard breathed.

“You know, when it comes down to it, mortality is not so sorrowful a thing after all,” Thranduil whispered, as his hand twitched slightly in his lap. “It does not hurt, to pull this from me – just as it does not hurt you, to grow older with every passing year.”

Bard just shook his head, slowly.

“What will that do to you?” he asked, and something that was almost a smile pulled at the corner of Thranduil’s mouth.

“I’ve lost movement in two of my fingers,” he murmured back, under his breath still. “Nothing irredeemable, my love. There is no need to worry.”

But despite that, Bard still could not help but glance once more at those fingers, twitching just a little, but stilling as the seconds passed. How much worse would this make Thranduil’s already failing health? How much of himself might he be forced to sacrifice in this – perhaps futile – search for knowledge, a search that Bard himself had been so insistent on.

He swallowed, and when he looked up again, Thranduil’s eyes were soft.

“Take it,” Thranduil told him, and Bard swallowed, reaching for the wire – still warm to the touch – as Thranduil ran gentle hands along his arm, closing the seam up once more. By the time he had finished there was no sign of what had just happened, and he shot Bard a small, closed off smile as he pulled his coat back on.

“Are you done?” the mechanic called, startling Bard.

“Aye,” he replied, finally tearing his eyes from Thranduil’s.

The mechanic was startled when Bard handed him the wire, holding it reverentially, running his fingers across it with wide eyes.

“I can’t believe it,” his whispered, before stuffing it quickly inside his jacket, eyes glancing around them, as if afraid someone would see them. “You weren’t lying.”

“What will you do with it?” Bard found himself asking, watching that part of the man he loved disappear.

“Sell it to salvage,” the mechanic told him, already turning to the hatch behind him. “I’ll do it anonymously, then they can sell it back to the city. I’ll earn enough to feed my family for a year. My daughter-”

He stopped himself, glancing back at the two of them, but Bard nodded at him to continue.

“My daughter has been sick,” he grunted, in the end. “We couldn’t afford the medicine before.”

Bard bit his lip. He had always wanted children – had always known, with a strange and distant certainty, that one day he would have them, too (there were plenty of children out there in need of adoption, after all) and the heartfelt feeling in this man’s voice touched him.

“Let’s go,” he said, for lack of anything better to say, and the two of them nodded, crouching low to make their way through the hatch.

The passageways seemed more like tunnels the deeper they went, cut out of stone rather than built of brick, thick cables running overhead, a distant ticking sound growing ever louder the deeper in they went. The mechanic – whose name, they learnt, was Mike – pointed out various collections of cables, telling them what they did, but didn’t seem able to give them much more information than that. Or, perhaps, he didn’t want to. His job was on the line, after all, and when Thranduil slowed to a stop beside a metal box fixed on the wall he shot them a rather impatient, worried look.

“I can hear it,” Thranduil whispered, more to himself than to anyone else, his hand pressed against this metal, and his voice was so soft that Bard could barely hear him, his eyes so distant that he might have been in a different time, a different place altogether.

“So many years…”

“Hey!” the mechanic called out, as Thranduil’s easy strength pulled the front of the metal casing. “You can’t-”

But Thranduil was already looking inside the box, at the strange clockwork assemblage that was fixed within it, moving slowly, the ticking sound all the louder now that it was free: it was not ticking in time, Bard realised now: its rhythm was off, stuttering, though whether it was supposed to he did not know. Made of some sort of gold alloy, perhaps, it was tarnished and old now, oil stained from maintenance, pinned here and there with iron rods to hold it in place, cables running off it that no doubt did things that Bard could never hope to understand. It seemed familiar somehow to Bard, but he could not quite place where he had seen it before – in a different context, he knew, looking different, too, but-

“It’s a heart,” Thranduil said, ever so quietly, his voice strange.

Of course, Bard realised, aching. So similar to the one that he had seen in Thranduil’s chest, at every clocksmith they had visited. But Thranduil’s glowed, moved with a gentle and continuous rhythm, was _alive…_

This was dead. Pinned up and used but no longer truly living, despite the continuous motion that it still had. Like a butterfly, in a collector’s case: it might look the same, but it had lost some inherent vitality, and just like those dead butterflies, though Bard could still appreciate the beauty of it in a distant way, he could not escape the disquiet that came from knowing that this was not where it was supposed to be.

“Aye,” the mechanic answered, shaking his head a little. “So the story goes. But anyone who knew anything about it is long dead now, and there is nothing we can do when they start to break down. Sounds fanciful to me, anyway – I reckon it is just a fancy bit of old tech. Everyone knows those clockwork men stories are nonsense.”

Bard did not say anything in reply: his eyes were fixed on Thranduil, and the strange, shuttered calm that seemed to have fallen over him.

“There may be clockwork here,” Thranduil said, after a long and pregnant pause, turning away. “But I do not think that there are answers for us.”

 

* * *

 

 

“It was different to see it in person,” Thranduil whispered into the curve of his neck later that night, already back on board the ferry, returned to it before it had even finished loading again. “To know that those parts were there was one thing, but…”

Bard just swallowed against the darkness, and closed his eyes, trying not to cry.

Thranduil was silent, after that, and never spoke of it again.

 

* * *

 

 

They returned to South America with heavy hearts, and Bard could not help but see the irony in that saying as Thranduil took his hand with his, far cooler than it should have been, only two of his fingers curling around Bard’s palm, the other two resting unresponsive, unfeeling.


	3. Chapter 3

North then, next. They attempted briefly to find Gandalf once more, when they returned to Buenos Aires, but the woman was gone, seemingly vanished into the spreading maw of the city as quickly has she had come – they were not overly concerned. She had given them a list of places to see, tips, contacts that would help them, that meant that seeing her again was not entirely necessary. In many ways, Bard was almost glad of it. This was their adventure, their story.

He did not want it to belong to anyone else.

Another airship then, to Venezuela this time, following the breadcrumbs spread out before them. Gandalf had left them two more hits worth pursuing in the Americas before they would be forced to turn their eyes across the Pacific, and Bard was determined to reach the both of them as quickly as possible, despite just how difficult they both were to actually access. Another airship, after that, to Canaima, by which point there were dark circles under Bard’s eyes that neither of them were willing to talk about, sleepless nights in airship hangers and cheap hotels catching up with him in a way that it never would with Thranduil.

His hand still twitched, from time to time.

He saw Bard looking once, and tried to smile about it.

“Just residual static charge,” he whispered, reaching for Bard with his still-living fingers. But Bard hadn’t wanted to be touched, not then, for the knowledge that Thranduil had ripped a part of himself out for nothing still weighed too heavily on his mind, still made his guilt throb in his temples, but he knew that it wasn’t just for his benefit, so it did not pull away.

A boat ride, after that. They did not say anything much to each other, for there was rather too much to say, and neither seemed to know where quite to begin, though often Bard caught Thranduil watching him, quite closely. It was easier to avoid each other once they had disembarked the boat, and began walking through the root-tangled path that led through the jungle to their destination. They walked single file, the birds a cacophony in the trees around them, and Bard wondered whether they were truly living things or remnants of clockwork, for never before had he heard so many calling at once, not when the air was normally so thick with pollution that fewer and fewer animals were being born every year.

The guide, pausing to look back at them, seemed to notice his confusion, and shot him a grin.

“So many birds, it is strange, isn’t it?” he asked, as Bard nodded.

“It is the waterfall,” he continued. “And the… well, you’ll see them, soon enough. But the air is cleaner here, much cleaner than anywhere else on earth, apart from those remote regions where man never reached. Life thrives, here.”

Bard remembered the cities he had seen, some close and some further, all of them thick with pollution, with oil. How long would life thrive?

For that he had no answer.

He never did.

But the hopelessness that was building in his chest seemed to dissipate with alarming speed when they finally caught sight of what they had come here to see: Kerepakupai Meru stretched before them, above them, its throbbing rapids a cacophonous roar drowning out anything that Bard might have normally said to Thranduil in moments like this, when faced with so astounding a sight. Thranduil’s eyes were wide too: for all that he had seen so much time go by, Bard realised that he must never have seen a feat of nature such as this, a waterfall that stretched almost a thousand metres in height.

Or, perhaps, not just a feat of nature.

The guide had stopped, was pointing out features in the landscape around them, and as Bard tuned back in to what he was saying he flinched, just a little, at a familiar name.

“It was a man named Manwe, with extraordinary gifts – perhaps not a man at all, some people would say – who came here and built the fans. You cannot see them now, for they are hidden by the height of the rock, but on a clear day they can be seen from far and wide. Those fans – we do not know how they work, even now, for they are difficult to access and hard to understand – but they seem to filter the air, so that in the canyon life lives as it did many centuries ago.”

Another Cogsmith, another clue given to them by Gandalf, and another set of technologies.

“Is it possible to see the fans?” he asked, and the guide shook his head.

“It is a hard route to the top of the mountain,” he replied, smiling a little kindly at Bard. “And the fans are closed off from visitors, and overgrown besides. They are patrolled constantly – no one knows how they work, you see, only that it involves ancient clockwork, so no one knows how to fix them should anything break, either.”

“Sounds familiar,” Bard mumbled under his breath, as the guide gestured them towards a viewing platform.

Despite his disappointment, he could not bring himself to be so angry. Gandalf had warned them that this was an unlikely lead to get them anywhere, and frankly, Bard had been skeptical about even wasting their time coming here – it had only been at Thranduil’s insistence that they had made the trek. He hadn’t really understood it at first, particularly given Thranduil’s lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of their quest throughout, but he thought now that perhaps he did.

It was in Thranduil’s eyes, in the slight smile around his mouth, in the tilt of his head as he stared up at the waterfall.

He had wanted to come to see it – it had nothing to do with his heart.

“It’s incredible,” he mumbled, moving to Thranduil’s side, pressing closer. He felt that perhaps their normal closeness had been interrupted since Antarctica, and it was only now that he wanted to fix that.

“And one day even this, as great and as fair as it is, will crumble to the ground, and be nothing more than the rubble and plains of something that was once majestic,” Thranduil replied.

Thranduil’s voice was soft: his hand was on the railing of the viewing platform, only his still-living fingers bending around the bar to hold it. Bard forced himself not to look away, but to study that hand, until the sight of it did not frighten him with its implication anymore.

“Don’t be so negative,” Bard whispered, in the end. He didn’t think that Thranduil was really talking about the waterfall, but he wasn’t entirely sure how he should address that.

“I’m not,” Thranduil answered, after a time, and when Bard looked up at his face, he saw that he was smiling. “It is the truth. And the movement of time is a beautiful thing.”

And all that hope and loss and fear and joy that had made up Thranduil’s life, all of it, the parts that Bard knew and the parts that he did not, were in his voice, and for just a moment, Bard thought that he might have understood how Thranduil could be so calm about the prospect of dying, how change after so long could seem so different to him than it did to Bard. Thranduil might have said more, but Bard was giving him that look, that one that meant _you are the beautiful thing, you know_ , and he turned away, hiding a smile in his sleeve.

 

* * *

 

 

Things were better, after that. Still not as they had always been, but close enough to it for them to ignore the strain around Bard’s eyes, the stillness in Thranduil’s fingers. The air around their next journeies even further north changed drastically as they travelled onwards, temperatures dropping by the hour: it was something of a shock to the system when they finally left their last airship’s warmth to the bitterness of a cold day in Canada.

Applications to visit the bio-domes of Haida Gwaii normally took some years to be processed as only a few were allowed within the ancient and sacred glass were allowed each month, but Gandalf had apparently known someone on the Haida council (Bard didn’t ask), so they found themselves rubber stamped and crossing the Hecate Strait to the islands without any delay. They were magnificent from a distance, even more so close up: the glass (if indeed it was glass, for Bard couldn't be certain) were entire domed sheets, far more seamless and smooth than that of War City. These were domes made, quite distinctly, by hands that were not the fumbling ones of humans. The two main islands of the collection were encased in a number of domes connected to each other directly: the hundreds of smaller islands dotted around the coast each were contained within their own, access to them only through small portals connected to tiny piers. Many of them were off limits entirely to outsiders, the indigenous inhabitants of the islands unwilling to let any who might pose a danger into their lands.

Bard couldn’t blame them, for that.

They were met by a guide at the main dock, who eyed them with some clear discomfort, her eyes lingering for longer than necessary on Thranduil, as if she could sense something about him that was not quite right. A great bee was carved into welcome sign, and Bard stared at it for some time before the guide noticed, and nodded towards it.

“The symbol of Yavanna,” she muttered.

It wasn’t a name that he had been familiar with before Gandalf had mentioned it, some weeks ago, when showing them a small piece of petrified wood lacking the rings that normally indicated lengthy growth, as if, in fact, it had sprung immediately from the ground, fully formed. He had found it on the beaches of Haida Gwaii, and he had talked with Thranduil about it had some length, but he said very little about Yavanna herself - Bard still knew very little about her – just one more name from a list of figures that remained essential strangers to him.

So he caught up with the guide, who eyed him with some surprise as he offered the warmest smile that he could summon unprovoked.

“Tell me about Yavanna?” he asked, and for a long moment she stared at him, before something softened in her eyes, and she shrugged.

“She walked among us, preserved our lands for our own, protected us from a world bent only on domination, on conquest. It is said that she saw the value in life grown from land made of the bones of ancestors: as plants grow best on top of the plants that came before them, so too does man grow better when they grow where all their kin that came before them were.”

Bard nodded, smiling just a little.

“She was a Cogsmith, wasn’t she?” he asked, and the look she turned on him was appraising. 

"That is the name given to them in the west, yes," she said, in the end. "We had a different name for them, for her, but in essence, yes, I suppose. Cogsmiths. The great creators. The curators of nature. Those who walked among us unseen, leaving tracks that memory has allowed to fade into dust."

"What did she do here?"

"She walked along our shores and saw the beauty that was, the beauty of what could be, and all that could be lost, too. She regrew the trees lost to storms, taller and grander before, and whilst she was among our people the flora grew more varied, the creatures that lived here did, too. She cared for the living, more than anything else, that is what they said - and when she saw what was happening elsewhere, how sacred lands were being consumed, she rose the sand and salt from the ocean to form the domes over us, protecting us, saving us. Everything grows here, still, and no one has taken our lands from us - they are ours, thanks to her."

The pride in her voice was clear, the awe and affection intermingling in the way that they only can in the voice of those telling stories that they had heard for as long as they could remember. It lifted Bard's spirits somewhat, even as the clouds overhead broke, rain thundering down against the dome overhead. 

"What do you do for water, for the plants?" he asked, and she pointed to the narrow channels in the glass that Bard had not noticed before, which fed the rainwater down through intricate internal pipework overhead. 

The guide lead them through to the bio-domes that they were allowed to visit, walking a little behind them as they wandered along the pathways, taking turns at random and without much concern for where they might lead. Long stretches of grey-white sand, towering cliffs, soaring trees: all of this and so much more encompassed within the glass of the dome, the sea coursing through some hidden channel to bubble up on the other side of the barrier, still lapping against the sand with the movement of the tides. It was beautiful, there was no way to deny that: a different sort of beauty to South Africa, to Venezuela, perhaps, but undeniable still. 

It might have taken Bard's breath away had he not been quite so confused. 

"It's amazing," he whispered to Thranduil, out of the corner of his mouth. "Don't get me wrong. But I can't actually see anything mechanical here, can you?"

Thranduil shrugged, oddly non-commital, before glancing behind them at their guide, who was allowing them a little more space. When he seemed certain that she could not overhear them he reached down, to grab a handful of fallen leaves in his one, working hand. 

He held them, quite close to his chest, and closed his eyes.

"There is a... like a static charge in them, but not quite," he whispered. "Something like living wire, but different. More complex, in a way. Nothing like me."

A breeze came, from somewhere Bard could not locate, and Thranduil let go of the leaves, which drifted from his fingers slowly, sofly, returning to the ground. 

They walked on, in silence for a while longer.

"Are you sorry we came?" Bard asked, in the end, and Thranduil shook his head immediately. 

"Not at all. We have found no answers here, but I am glad that I got to see this place. There is a wonder here that cannot quite be explained, a feeling in the air... it makes me feel more alive than I have done for the longest time."

"Besides," he continued, when Bard said nothing in reply. "It is a place I got to see with you, a memory to be shared, something that belongs to just you and I, and that is a precious thing indeed."

Bard could feel a blush start to build behind his ears at that.

“It makes you wonder why they left, when they were able to create such beauty,” was all that he could find to say, staring around himself, but when he caught sight of Thranduil in his peripheral vision he realised that the man was shaking his head.

“This beauty was here before – Yavanna, and the rest of them, they preserved it, and replicated it, but they did not create it.” There was a small smile curving at Thranduil’s mouth, a gentle thing. “And we will never know why they left – but I suspect that many of them did not, not by choice.”

Bard frowned, then. “What do you mean?"

“We heard the story of Tulkas, Bard.”

A sick sort of dread then, building around his chest. How many of them had died in pursuit of fixing their own mistakes? How many of them had been lost before their time?

“You think-”

Thranduil shrugged.

“Perhaps.”  
Bard swallowed, painfully.

“That’s terrible.”

But Thranduil's eyes were soft as they turned to Bard, full of feelings that neither of them could articulate. 

“Is it?" he asked, in the end. "Death must come to all things, in the end, and I think that if I were to die, I would want to do so in pursuit of something that I believed in.”

 

* * *

 

Crossing the Pacific was no easy task. Storms wracked the sea, and from their position in Canada the weather was predicted to be even worse, so flying was interspaced with frequent stops across Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, along the Eastern Russian coastline before they finally reached China and the delta of the Yellow River. The cramped cabin and recycled air were bad enough: the constant delays and inability to do anything other than pad around a constant litany of air-terminals that all looked _exactly the damn same_ all made Bard all the more impatient to join the boat at the mouth of the river.

It was a great sense of relief when they finally did: they spent the first couple of nights on board sleeping out on the deck rather than in their cabin, just for the novelty of fresh air, wrapped up in blankets, uncomfortable but feeling oddly liberated. The other passengers thought them strange, it was clear, but neither of them could bring themselves to really care.

The journey up the river took several days, and Bard and Thranduil spoke little to the other passengers. It was the longest time they had spent around people in such a small place in a long time – they had kept to their cabins in the airships – and now Bard found it strange to be around them. Everything about this quest made him feel oddly separate from them, disparate, the knowledge that he was searching for something that none of them would ever understand leaving him feeling adrift from the rest of humanity, clinging to the raft that was Thranduil, the only thing keeping afloat.

Because of this, he had not really been aware of how far they were from their destination, and the announcement that they had reached it, in an inconspicuous but deep stretch of the river, came as something of a surprise.

“There it is,” the captain of the boat called to the passengers. “You see it, gleaming beneath the water? The bones of the last leviathan.”

They had been told the rest of the story in their first few days on the great water-courses since they had boarded at Jinan. Its engines churned up the waters beneath them as the stories were passed from one passenger to the next, evolving and growing and becoming more and more exaggerated the longer that it was discussed.

The leviathans had not been seen in centuries by the time this one came from the sea – they were believed to have died out, if they had ever existed to begin with. Ulmo’s children, that which he had created to guard the waters of this planet – like whales, in build if not quite in size, but whirring with clockwork beneath great sheets of leather stitched together by the hand of something close to a God. Teeth like sharks, made to protect; eyes made from the largest of pearls. This beast had crawled from the ocean up the river one day, nearly a century ago now – no one knew why it had come, only that it had been dying, spewing oil from deep rends in its skin that stained the river strange orange-yellow colours that had never quite faded in places, as if it had sunk into the rocks. It had forced its way up the course of the river, flooding the lands around it as it had dislodged the river water, shaking the river banks so that nearby houses trembled as if an earthquake had struck them.

Eventually, of course, it had died – it had gone as far up the river as it could, until its body had sunk finally beneath the water. Some still wondered why it had come to this place – was it a marker of a great cataclysm, had it been searching for something, was it chased from the water by something far more terrifying than itself? There were no answers. That did not stop people from speculating.

There was not much left of it now. Scavengers had seen to that, just as they had in Antarctica – the mass of precious metal and material had been too much to resist by the authorities, particularly when so many of their own natural resources had been stripped in their desperate struggle for industrial advancement. All that was left now was the great bones of the beast, made of a metal that none could identify, too heavy for even cranes to lift from the water. They had been left there, slowly collecting drifts of silt as the decades rolled past, a tourist attraction now, and little more.

A quick bribe to the captain put them at the front of the queue for the dive into the river: heavy equipment was strapped to their backs, great glass domes placed over their heads, filling Bard’s ears immediately with the sound of ticking coming from somewhere deep within the recesses of its mechanism. The water was cold when they finally were permitted to dive, colder than Bard had expected, and he had sunk, motionless for a moment, in shock, until the flicker of movement at the corner of his eye had brought him back to the moment.

He followed Thranduil down to the riverbed, to the bones in the silt.

They shone, strange and silvery, something like titanium but… not. Bard knew, though he did not know how, that he had never seen a metal like this before, if it even was metal: it had a quality entirely unfamiliar to him, glowing like the living wires had, inhuman, impossible. As they came closer through the silty water they seemed to grow, and it was only when he reached the riverbed he realised just how vast the skeleton was, flinching in his suit as he turned to see an enormous jawbone, its teeth ripped from it, cartilage and bone left jagged by the industrious knives of scavengers.

Dead.

That deep, yawning feeling seemed to grow all the bigger inside him. Once more, something dying, something stolen, something dead. There wasn’t even any of the original mechanisms left of this beast: it had all been stripped away. At one thought he thought he saw something glittering amongst the silt, and for a heart-rending moment he was certain it might be a left-over cog, something unnoticed, but when he looked closer he realised it was just a smooth river stone, catching the sunlight through the water. Everything had been stripped away.

There was nothing here.

It was strange, ghostly, beautiful sight, but there was no part of this that would help Thranduil.

More wasted time, when they seemed to have so little left.

He reached to touch one of those bones, when their half an hour was done and the beeping in their suit indicated that they were due to re-surface.

It felt warm, beneath the thick leather of his suit, but he wasn’t sure if that was his imagination or not.

Bard was trying desperately not to feel disappointed by the time they had dried off and returned to the deck of the boat, was struggling not to feel the weight of another failure straddling around his shoulders. Another ocean crossed, another continent breached, and still no answers had been found.

“What else do we know about Ulmo?” Bard whispered, trying to distract himself, the two of them leaning against the railing of the ship, craning over, staring at the dim shape beneath them as the rest of the passengers took their turns diving among the ribcages of something which had once lived, something that had once been miraculous.

Thranduil shrugged, the movement graceful, betraying the fact that he probably did not know all that much – just the fragments of tales spoken to him by family whose faces he might well have forgotten after this much time.

“They say he made filters, deep in the depths of the ocean, to cleanse it from all that mankind has poured into it.”

Bard nodded, slowly.

“Like Manwe, with the air?”

Thranduil pulled his lip between his teeth, worrying at it in an oddly human gesture as he seemed to think on that.

“So they say, though no one has ever seen them – there is much of the ocean that we have never seen. It seems as much as many of them wished to create, others were more concerned with trying to save what had already been there. Ulmo showed man how to bend metal to make boats, how to construct the breathing apparatus that allows mankind to skim just underneath the surface – but he was a being of a different make, who could survive the deep pressure. Not of flesh and blood, like man.”

“So we will never get to go deep enough to see what he created?”

“Who knows?” Thranduil replied, with a small smile. “Man has already created so many wonders.”

Bard shook his head.

“But we have destroyed so much, too. So much has been ruined already.”

Thranduil’s hand was warm in his.

“All things must come to an end.”

That ache was back, the deep and consuming thing, and he tried to find Thranduil’s eyes with his own, those beautiful eyes, searching for comfort – but Thranduil’s gaze was fixed on the water, on the glimmering metal of the skeleton of the great leviathan deep beneath the water.

“You won’t,” Bard said, eventually, and then Thranduil finally did look at him, and there was pain there, something left unsaid, something that Bard was not willing to listen to, something that he still did not think that he was willing to hear.

“Perhaps I should,” he began. “Bard-”

But he shook his head, and dropped Thranduil’s hand.

“I can’t talk about this.”

He didn’t know if Thranduil really understood, but he did not try to carry on the conversation.

 

* * *

 

 

They didn’t say anything more about it at any point that day, nor the next, when they left the river at Lanzhou to headed straight once more to the air terminals, in order to connect their next flight (and God, Bard had had had enough of this). They didn’t say anything as they waited in the foyer, nor as they boarded another airship (and Gods, but was Bard growing sick of airships, of the throbbing engines and packaged food and cramped cabins).

Bard wasn’t sure if they were ever going to talk about it, and he was pretty sure that was his fault.

They fell asleep in silence that night, and though they started out separate in the bed, it wasn’t long before they found each other in their sleep, wrapping familiar bodies around each other, seeking comfort even when they were not awake. When Bard woke late the next day, it was to the sound of the pilot announcing their arrival in Shanghai airspace, with Thranduil’s hair pressed against his face.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure if Thranduil was awake enough to hear him. "I'm sorry that we have found nothing, and I am sorry that I can't be okay with that."

Shanghai was visible from their portholes now, and what a sight it was – Bard had heard the stories, of course, but it was only as he saw the city that he realised just what truth had been within them. Shanghai had been one of the great industrial forerunners of the world, one of the greatest cities to ever have been, to ever be. More populace than any other, stronger, greater: a city of innovation and craft, of steel and iron and all things that made man brutal, and strong.

“What phenomenal things has man created in their infant mortality,” Thranduil whispered, fixed on the sprawling mass of steel and fog beneath them, a city stretching out far further than Bard had ever seen before – a thing of dirt, yes, but a glorious thing, none the less. Bard couldn’t help but wonder – perhaps mankind was made for filth, but did that have to mean that what they made could not be beautiful, too, just in a different way?

They were not made of living wire and impossible metal. They were flesh, and blood, and bone – rotting, changing, ending, but magnificent in its own, short way.

Perhaps he needed to see these things through Thranduil’s eyes.

The largest city left in the world – and certainly still the largest and most successful industrial one – certainly had much to suggest itself in terms of the development of mechanisms. But when they disembarked the airship, Thranduil did not lead them to any factory, nor to the union houses of any craftsmen – in fact, he did not seem to be heading anywhere. For hours they simply walked, through streets that seemed to constantly change: from cramped alleyways lined with workers houses to grand roads made impressive by the tall and graceful buildings on either side, to winding and beautiful streets leading to temples, to high-end restaurants and shops. It was a strange place, to a man who had lived most of his life in the muck of a city in which nothing was ever clean, or beautiful.

For all its glory, Bard was still uncertain what they were looking for. He had been surprised when Thranduil had suggested stopping in Shanghai – it had not come up at any point before in their journey – but he had been willing, willing to indulge anything that Thranduil might ask at this point, unable to forget just how much more Thranduil knew, even if his knowledge was a fragmentary one. Their wanderings did not seem to elicit any answer to this uncertainty, and in the end, he could hold in his curiosity no longer.

“Why did we come here?” Bard asked, in the end, as they took a seat across from each other at the outside table of a bar. Thranduil was smiling, his eyes on nothing, as if he was enjoying a private joke of his own. Bard nudged his knee with his own, shooting him and inquiring look, and he was surprised when Thranduil leaned close, speaking low.

“Aulë created his own peoples, you know,” he said, and Bard blinked.

“Like you?” he asked, and Thranduil made a gesture close to a shrug, not quite a yes or a no.

“In a sense, but not quite. I was never told much about Aule – he didn’t have all that much to do with us, apparently, though he was a great craftsman, perhaps in many ways the most skilled of all of them, for he was the only one apart from Yavanna able to create anything near the complexity of the clockwork men, the two of them the only ones that ever came close to rivalling Eru’s own work. He made his own mechanical race, built for creation, not for war as we were: and he too helped man enter their vast clockwork age, handed to them the greatest of innovations, though it is said that he regretted it later, when man began to build over the underground cities of his own creations, when they began to hunt them, when his creations had to hide from mortals.”

Bard chewed on his lip for a moment. “Do they still walk this earth?”

Thranduil’s eyes were back on the busy street in front of them, but Bard was not expecting the answer that he gave after a long pause.

“They are watching us right now.”

Bard had to try very hard not to flinch, to stop himself from spinning around and staring at everyone behind him, and Thranduil shot him a little smile, before nodding just slightly in the direction of a narrow street. Bard glanced over, as casually as he could: people moved in and out at a rapid space, but there, leaning against the wall, was a small man, not facing them and smoking, for all the world uninterested in them and everything going on around him. But then, just quickly, Bard caught him glancing over at them, a quick and fleeting thing, before he took another long drag of his cigarette.

“Not very subtle,” Bard remarked, and Thranduil hid a smile in his sleeve.

“If they wanted to stay hidden, we would never know. They want us to see that they are watching.”

Bard nodded, though he was not entirely sure that he understood.

“In what way are they different?” he asked in the end, confident that Thranduil would not say anything more about why they were there when they were still watching them. Thranduil shrugged, just a little.

“They do not live eternal, like I, though their lives are greatly extended. They live for a spell, then they retire to the stone, as they say, and stop their clockwork, only to restart it again after years of rest. I do not know much more than that: they are a secretive race.”

Bard caught the sight of movement out of the corner of his eye.

“He’s leaving – should we follow him?”

Thranduil shook his head.

“No,” he said, quietly. “They will come to us when they are ready.”

And he was right, as he so often was: later that night, after wandering for a time, they had come across a small restaurant, almost empty, and they had taken a table in the corner, ordering in halting and unsure words. Thranduil said little, facing the door, but his eyes were focused on the street outside, and after about half an hour, when their plates had been cleared away and Bard was beginning to wonder about moving on, Thranduil sat suddenly straighter, his face hardening.

Bard did not turn around: he did not need to. A small, stocky man was already pulling a chair to their table, his fiery red hair streaked with grey, his strong hands littered with scars. He folded his arms across his chest, glaring at Thranduil.

“It has been many years since last one of your kind was seen in this part of the world,” he said, his voice low and authoritative, and not entirely friendly.

Thranduil inclined his head, just a little.

“And many years since any word was heard of yours.”

They stared at each other, for a long and hard moment, and Bard wondered briefly if the whole thing was going to end up in a fight, but quite suddenly the two of them slumped back in their chairs, almost in unison.

“Aye,” replied the newcomer. “Secrets are kept for a reason. What are you doing here?”

Thranduil raised a pointed eyebrow.

“To the point, I see,” he answered. “It does not concern you.”

Bard was not entirely sure why Thranduil was suddenly being so cagey, nor why he was pushing away the first tangible evidence of the Cogsmiths that they could actually speak to. He put his hand on Thranduil’s leg under the table, in an attempt to offer calm and comfort should he need it, and leant closer over the table.

“We’re searching for something.”

The red-haired stranger stared at him, bemused, and when he replied it was to Thranduil, not to Bard.

“It seems odd to me that the human is a part of this,” he said, his own eyebrow quirking. “Secrets only remain secrets as long as they are kept, friend. Though I suspect that you would not be the first to break your silence.”

Thranduil did not reply to that; the man shook his head, and sighed.

“We have never been friends, your people and mine, but we are few in number now, and you are even fewer, if there are even any of you left whatsoever – and I have no proof of that. No matter what might have gone on between our peoples in the past, we share a common frailty, and should you need our help, I will see what can be done.”

Thranduil seemed startled at this: his leg was tense against Bard’s hand as he leant closer over the table.

“You have a reputation of reticence,” he said, his voice slightly less harsh than before. “I will admit surprise.”

The man quirked a small smile.

“Extinction creeps ever closer every century,” he said, and his voice was light but laced with a perceptible grief. “Less and less of my kin arise from stone at each awakening. If ever there was a time to let go of the past, it is now.”

They stared at each other, silent, and then the man reached across, his thick fingers skimming the back of Thranduil’s hand, surprisingly gentle, before he turned Thranduil’s hand over and pressed just one finger to the centre of his palm. Bard expected Thranduil to pull away, but he did not: to Bard’s surprise, his eyes flickered closed, and he seemed to shrink in on himself at the touch, which did not waver.

“And you are dying,” the man said. “I can hear the slowing of your clockwork from here, and now I can feel it too. You can feel mine, the movement of my clockwork, quicker than yours – we think that’s why it doesn’t last as long, you know. But the same, at the end of the day, in many ways – we turn to different cogs, we answer to different songs, but deep down, we are not all that different. Just dying, frightened members of races passed out of mortal memory, trying desperately to cling on to something.”

“It has been centuries since last I felt the ticking of any heart other than my own,” Thranduil whispered, his voice strange – not quite joy and not quite grief, but some painful and complicated combination of the two of them.

“You have been alone,” the man said. “For so very long.”

But then Thranduil opened his eyes, and shook his head, and his free hand found Bard’s underneath the table.

“Not quite alone,” he replied, and the man smiled, wild and wide and genuine.

“Aye,” he answered. “Not quite alone.”

The three of them stared at each other for a long moment, connected in a line of touch, and then the man nodded, as if finally making his mind up about something.

“My name is Dain,” he told them. “Dain Ironfoot – I lost a leg, some years passed, and we didn’t have the right metal to replace it, so they had to do it with iron. I’m the last in a long line of rulers of my people, and we here are all that are left, now.”

“I am Bard,” he found himself answering. “I’m mortal, and not a part of any great line at all. And right now we’re trying to find the Cogsmiths. Any trace of them, at all, or any way to repair him. Do you-”

Dain shook his head, his mouth twitching with a half-smile, but his eyes sad.

“We were made differently, my kind and his,” he told him, anticipating Bard’s question. “And our skill is waning. Perhaps once, some centuries back… but now we do not know how to fix a heart such as his – and I am sorry for that.”

Thranduil did not look surprised, but he did look interested.

“You sound as if you have tried.”

“I…” Dain looked away, for a moment. “It was many, many years ago now. One of my cousin’s sons. He hadn’t even taken his first stone-sleep when he was taken from us, too young. But he had loved one such as you, and she followed him. We tried, when her own clockwork faltered after his death, but…”

“I’m sorry,” Thranduil said, his voice grave.

“So am I,” Dain said, sincerely. “She was brave, until the end.”

Bard sat back in his chair, disappointed despite himself.

“So you cannot help us,” he said, and Dain pursed his lips, his eyes bright and shrewd.

“Not with that,” he said. “And it grieves me greatly that we cannot, I mean that with all honesty. But perhaps, in some other way. We have been gathering our own clues, you know. Perhaps it is time to work together.”

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Thranduil answered, with a reticent amusement.

Dain nodded, smiling too.

“All things change, my friend. Surely you’ve realised that by now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: out of interest, is anyone even reading this? i'm struggling to work up the enthusiasm when chapters are only getting a couple of reviews/kudoses. would appreciate some feedback team, feed your writers love and all that.


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